Wow Mondo, I'm really amazed. So you are blocking not only my links to Carl Camerons investigation of major crimes, crimes you allegedly abhor, but you also block my comments when I point out the blocking.

As someone who was responsible for moderating comments on political sites himself, I think it is perfectly legitimate for you to block whatever you want. It's your site, you pay the bills, you select published content.

But what really bugs me is, that you can't be bothered to at least send an e-mail to a loyal reader and commenter like me, who has recommended this site to his friends since the days when Phil was still at the New Yorker. By e-mail, you could at least shortly explain why you censored the content in question, for which I saw no basis.

1., Iran would never attack Israel with its so far imagined nuclear bomb, because Israel HAS 300 OF THEM!! Ever heard of nuclear deterrence, Mr. Stein?

2., No Iranian leader has "explicitly promised to wipe Israel off the map". Some of them have talked about how the Zionist occupying regime will outlive itself, yes. But
that is totally NOT "promising to wipe Israel off the map".

Has the pictured event anything to do with politics? Was it connected to a fundraising activity?

If not, it only shows some people who decide to define themselves partly through money, as expressed in the "cash money team" comment.
Which would only prove one thing, that the people in question are vain, shallow excuses of a human being.

After Grass, a respected Nobel Laureate, published this poem critical of Israel and breaking taboos like Israeli nuclear weapons, the Israel Lobby in Germany went on a libeling spree against him. The Zentralrat der Juden, originally intended to give German Jewry a unified voice, attacked Grass and smeared him essentially as an "anti-Semite". Even more appaling, Israels ambassador to Germany answered Grass by stating "it's normal for Europeans to accuse Jews of ritual murder around Easter". That's pretty serious, libeling the population you are intended to represent your country to.

Of course, the political and media establishment does not come out in support for Grass' statements. They don't talk about his peace plan for the Middle East, entailing a nuclear free zone including Israel. They all fear the wrath of the Lobby.

"I believe in the notion of a Jewish and democratic state, for all the complexity such a juxtaposition entails. I believe that such a state can exist without the oppression of another nation of people"

Yeah such a state can exist, but not on land where other people live! Put it in the arctic, if you want a "Jewish and democratic" state.

Absolutely fantastic, Phil. When I clicked the headline, I thought "manifesto" was a bit pretentious. Not anymore. You are a rightful heir to Alfred M. Lilienthal and others.

Personally, I think you are best when you don't give a shit about what some of your (Jewish) friends and family think. In some articles, for example the one about Sands book, you write along the lines of "A friend tells me it's crackpot". I imagine there are people telling you "okay you can criticize Israel and Jewish organizations, but don't go too far. Don't question taboo x."

Except for the fact that one candidate, Ron Paul, has openly defended the Palestinians' efforts at the UN and criticized the US administrations efforts to block them:

"While I do not see UN membership as a particularly productive move for the Palestinian leadership, I do not believe the US should use its position in the UN Security Council to block their membership. I believe in self-determination of peoples and I recognize that peoples may wish to pursue statehood by different means."

So there WOULD be much room for the Palestinians in this election cycle, if the mainstream media and mainstream public stopped pretending that there is no candidate with interesting and helpful positions.

Nice spotting the double standard, Phil. I guess Beinarts argument that he thought he had no business in talking about that foreign country, is self-delusion. His real issue was that he didn't want to hurt friends and family.

Of course hooligans in every other country are aggressives. And some of them racist. But in Germany, England or Italy, when one of them shows his racism openly, he gets shunned by sensible folks. The club makes a big gesture and at the next game, fans have big signs protesting the racist in their midst.

Why isn't that the case in Israel? I think because too many Jews still have a blind spot for their own racism. They think their racism is justified, because the world is so much more racist than themselves (in their own mind, that is).

This attitude is going to change, inevitably, with honest and intelligent Jews like Avraham Burg identifying the racist strain in their community. But how many non-Jews need to endure this crap until all Jews are finally out of their tribal mind-prison?

"a 2008 study by Wohl and Branscombe that found the Jewish subjects who were reminded of the Holocaust and of the Jewish people having been victims in the past tended to see the Palestinians as the root of the conflict more than other subjects did. In other words, the researchers concluded, in order to protect itself from extinction, the group legitimizes harming others."

They only have power because those at the bottom are not asking questions.

Historically, media entities financed by the top of the pyramid have deceived the public into thinking that their fellow citizens don't ask questions.

The internet has blown the lid off this deceiving practice, and it shows in the NYT comments.

What's needed now, is that ALL opponents to war come out into the street, so they can see how many they truly are. Realists, Idealists, Liberal Zionists, whatever. Out onto the street and march to Washington. Jail the war criminals and make it clear that any government which a) participates in a war against Iran and b) doesn't use maximum pressure on Israel to stop an Israeli attack on Iran will get jailed, too.

As soon as Israel ends the occupation of the West Bank, ends the siege of Gaza and enacts the Right of Return and apologizes for their various crimes, we will condemn said rockets as "collective punishment".

Thanks both Annie (above) and Bumblebye, I didn't know of the dual citizenship. And of course, on is free to get buried wherever one pleases. I just thought it was a little suspicious, given the Israeli government's hunger for publicity stunts.

"The murders of four Jews outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, Monday are having reverberations among Israelis and Palestinians."

Could you please mention tha the murders of thouse four persons are part of a larger killing spree? Not all victims have been Jews, so it would be dishonest to frame this simply as a "innocent Jews are dead!"-story.

It's like when Gabriele Giffords was injured, everybody talked about her and few mentioned that there were several other dead(!) victims, among them a US judge.

"there are today two Israels: a flawed but genuine democracy within the green line and an ethnically-based nondemocracy beyond it"

How very wrong. Paradoxically, the occupation has not much to do with racism, but with violently driving people off from land you crave. Israel itself is the much more racist part of Beinarts dualism, because it claims to be the state of a mythical Jewish people. Because on their passport, Jewish Israelis have "Jew" printed and not "Israeli". Because to the government, you are a Jew if your mother is Jewish, an inherently biological and racist argument.

"Europeans are becoming increasingly angry about what their aid is supporting."

Yes, but they have a long way to go. Our political process may be not as paralyzed by the Israel Lobby as is yours in Washington, but they still call the shots.

Just this week, the leader of Germans main "opposition" party SPD, Sigmar Gabriel, was travelling in the West Bank. He posted on Facebook that conditions there are unacceptable and called them "Apartheid-like".

Of course, the thought police were quickly on the case, denouncing him. So he issued an apology hours later, saying that comparing Israel to South Africa was not fair.

"Afghan parliamentary team says many Americans were involved in massacre"

"And who would you believe, them filthy goatherders or your own government, which always told you the truth, especially about Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, "they took the babies from the incubators", Iraqi WMDs?"

"And one of those realities is that a Jewish voice is more powerful than a non-Jewish one in establishment circles."

Phil, you are a sharp observer. That distinguishes you from many other sites. Quality gets rewarded, so I predict your readership will grow in quantity and quality, while the readership of people who shut their eyes on something as obvious as the Jewish share of the establishment will decline.

If there is a god, her soul will definitely rest in peace. She was a MLK and Ghandi in an age where MLK and Ghandi are largely forgotten. If the mainstream discourse were not as biased against Palestinian human rights, the picture of her standing before that bulldozer would be just as prominent as the picture where a Chinese student stands in front of a Chinese tank.

I never met Rachel, but her speech as a young kid touches me. Please watch from 05:05 onwards:

"I always say that the Israel lobby transcends party, it is bigger than party. "

Welcome to the real world. Practically every issue of importance transcends party, regardless if it is private banksterism, corporate cronyism, warmongering, Islam-bashing, looting of public property and funds, you name it.

The whole notion of party politics is basically for idiots who are not intelligent enough to deal with the complexity of reality. It's football-like (I pick my team, cheer for them and boo the opponent) for a reason.

Hm. Would the hundreds of Israeli nukes really be enough to stop an Iranian and wider Muslim/concerned world retaliation against such an Israeli attack?

I think there is a chance that if Israel attacked Iran, even nukes on Arab cities wouldn't stop the region from lynching the Israeli butchers responsible for the latest war.

Which means that Obamas tacit approval of an Israeli attack is not the biggest problem, even if it is of course in itself despicable.

The biggest problem is, that Obama doesn't declare to Netanjahu in the strongest terms that if Israel attacks, the US won't lift a finger dealing with the inevitable backlash.

If he did that, there would be enough Israelis willing to stop Netanjahu because they would fear retaliation. Unfortunately though, most Israelis have a sense that the guilt-ridden west will protect them, no matter how criminal their deeds.

"No president, not even Bill Clinton, has traveled so widely in Jewish circles, been taught by so many Jewish law professors, and had so many Jewish mentors, colleagues, and friends, and advisers as Barack Obama "

From what I read, he says that Judaism (= Jewish religion) and secular Jewish culture have some racist content and produced many racists. He doesn't say that Judaism or Jewishness can't get rid of their racist contents, that they can't evolve to something more positive.

I can only judge by some articles I read from Atzmon. But as far as I know, he does not equalize Jews and Zionism. But he asks the question, how do Jews definde themselves, when they are neither a political nor a biological "people".

Also, he rightfully points out that there is more evil among Jews than only Zionism. He points to Jewish suprematists and racists, who are not necessarily Zionists. (Yossi Gurvitz also pointed out Jewish suprematism).

Of course, merely stating that Jews are just as capable of being assholes as other humans, and therefore Jewish racism and suprematism exists, is taboo in many circles.

In his own words, describing The Wandering Who:

"Gilad examines the tribal aspects embedded in Jewish secular discourse, both Zionist and anti Zionist; the ‘holocaust religion’; the meaning of ‘history’ and ‘time’ within the Jewish political discourse; the anti-Gentile ideologies entangled within different forms of secular Jewish political discourse and even within the Jewish left. He questions what it is that leads Diaspora Jews to identify themselves with Israel and affiliate with its politics."

So the only difference to, say, Philip Weiss, is that Gilad recognizes that racism is not per se a feature of only religious Jews, but of some secular Jews also.

Just like in Lybia, NATO is using Islamists to get rid of a secular, militaristic Arab ruler, who in the case of Gaddafi happened to bring his citizens unheard of wealth and social security, compared to other North African nations.

And we are supposed to cheer for the Islamists? How come, all of a sudden?

I think your gushing optimism is okay, Phil, because you acknowledge it. You let us know, and basically tell us to read you with a grain of salt from time to time. And by the way, your reporting is always top notch, as well as your personal stuff. We doubt only your analysis over how "huge" something is going to be.

Mooser, don't be so snarky. For every Rambo in the military, there is one thoughtful person who joined the forces because he wanted to defend his country. And that person is slowly realizing that they are on the wrong side of history, occupying all these nations that have never harmed America.

There's a reason why US military members send more donations to Ron Paul than to any other candidate. They don't want a president who sends them off to the next pointless killing.

Interventions which aim to achieve some noble goal (like "democracy for Afghans") can only succeed, if several key prerequisites exist. The most important is, drive a wedge between the alleged evil-doers (The Taliban) and the freedom-loving people.

Too many killings like these have occured, too many US soldiers posing before SS-symbols, too many defecating on bodily remains, too many Quran burnings. It has gotten so bad, that the freedom-loving people are experiencing the interventionist as the more dire threat to their safety.

From that point on, the intervention has failed.

Get out now, minimize the human and economic cost, and give the Afghan people time to achieve their freedom by themselves.

"I wonder if mondoweiss would allow for articles on race and gender in the United States"

Phil and the Mondo staff, I am strongly against "articles on race and gender in the United States". How many black presidents and female secretaries of state do we need until we realize that "race and gender" is not the issue? The issue is wether a policy is right or wrong, and we should focus on that.

If however you are very interested in the subject and want to explore it further, I can't fault you, it's your site. But please keep the number of articles down so as to not distract from the more important stuff. I think there are enough sources for people interested in "race and gender", Mondo needs to stick to its strengths.

Apart from the correct notion of Zionism being anachronistic, don't be so defeatist with the gender and sexuality thing.

"The world is embracing more individualistic idiosyncratic ideas of gender and sexuality, planted decades ago by leaders. So be it. I will keep my attitudes in a box."

More like "planted decades ago by opportunistic powermongers who knew that by erasing traditional families, they would transfer power towards centralized structures like states and corporations".

That said, of course you can dress like you want and even have doctors tinkering with your sex organs. But I am free to not like it, and tell you that you disgust me. Just as you are free to tell me that I disgust you.

And what's even more important, stop the fucking political whining, as if gay people and medically changed individuals where oh so oppressed in western society. Sure, some get occasionally screamed at or punched in the face, but we have more important issues for now, like war and financial robbery aka the private banking cartel.

"A poll two weeks ago—about 70 percent consider themselves to be the chosen people. American Jews think we as Jews are chosen to carry out tikkun olam [social justice]. Israeli Jews think something different—we are the chosen people of God, we are chosen to do anything we damn well please. To take people’s land. Take peoples lives. There is actually no mainstream force standing against the Jewish brotherhood."

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